We’re supposed to dodge another disaster when an asteroid zooms by on Feb. 15.

It will get no closer than about 17,200 miles from Earth, scientists say. Given the vastness of
space, that still sounds awfully close, but perhaps I’m just prone to worry.

Even if it were on a collision course, the asteroid — about 50 yards wide — is too small to
extinguish life on Earth.Or, as NASA explained in terms I find less than comforting: “In 1908,
something about the size of it (the asteroid) exploded in the atmosphere above Siberia, leveling
hundreds of square miles of forest.”

Given that enormous space rocks have hit Earth before with devastating results, wouldn’t you
expect humans to become more excited about such stuff? A rational species might even get to work on
a plan for how to avert a catastrophe.

Somehow, though, this type of thing just doesn’t interest us as much as, say, Duchess Kate’s
pregnancy or post-game assessments of the Super Bowl commercials. (I liked the miracle Joe Montana
stain the most.)

I suspect that, even if we knew that the Big One was coming, we’d still be the same
uncooperative, distracted, quarrelsome species we’ve always been.

I’ve made a list that forecasts exactly how various groups and individuals would react to the
imminent threat of an asteroid doomsday.

Here are my predictions:

• Ohio legislature: Figuring that the same thing that is supposed to save the
state will also save the world, the General Assembly would pass emergency legislation allowing the
asteroid to be “fracked.”

• Gov. John Kasich: Whatever plan he came up with, a key component would be that
it wouldn’t raise income taxes.

• Members of Congress: They wouldn’t do much, but they’d do it loudly and in front
of cameras.

• President Barack Obama: He’d say that people with incomes above $250,000 a year
should absorb more of the impact.

• Columbus school officials: They would spout a lot of education jargon and blame
the media.

• Apple nerds: They would yawn — because, to them, an asteroid strike isn’t nearly
as earthshaking as an iPhone release.

• TV news executives: They’d be happy that the apocalypse came during a “sweeps”
month.

• Conspiracy theorists: They’d say the asteroid strike is just a plot to destroy
evidence that Obama was born in Kenya, the CIA planned 9/11 and Exxon silenced the inventor of a
car that runs on water.

• Urban hipsters: They’d panic but in an ironic way.

• Buckeye football fans: They would fret about how the end of the world might
affect recruiting.

• National Rifle Association leaders: Whatever solution they offered would involve
more guns. That’s their solution for everything.